Saturday, April 6, 2013

Akavir
is the kingdom of the beasts. No Men or Mer live in Akavir, though Men once
did. These Men, however, were eaten long ago by the vampiric Serpent Folk of
Tsaesci. Had they not been eaten, these Men would have eventually migrated to Tamriel.
The Nords left Atmora for Tamriel. Before them, the Elves had abandoned
Aldmeris for Tamriel. The Redguards destroyed Yokuda so they could make their
journey. All Men and Mer know Tamriel is the nexus of creation, where the Last
War will happen, where the Gods unmade Lorkhan and left their Adamantine Tower
of secrets. Who knows what the Akaviri think of Tamriel, but ask yourself: why
have they tried to invade it three times or more?

There
are four major nations of Akavir: Kamal, Tsaesci, Tang Mo, and Ka Po' Tun. When
they are not busy trying to invade Tamriel, they are fighting with each other.

Kamal
is "Snow Hell". Demons live there, armies of them. Every summer they
thaw out and invade Tang Mo, but the brave monkey-folk always drive them away.
Once Ada'Soom Dir-Kamal, a king among demons, attempted to conquer Morrowind,
but Almalexia and the Underking destroyed him at Red Mountain.

Tsaesci
is "Snake Palace", once the strongest power in Akavir (before the
Tiger-Dragon came). The serpent-folk ate all the Men of Akavir a long time ago,
but still kind of look like them. They are tall, beautiful (if frightening),
covered in golden scales, and immortal. They enslave the goblins of the
surrounding isles, who provide labor and fresh blood. The holdings of Tsaesci
are widespread. When natives of Tamriel think of the Akaviri they think of the
Serpent-Folk, because one ruled the Cyrodilic Empire for four hundred years in
the previous era. He was Potentate Versidue-Shaie, assassinated by the Morag
Tong.

Tang Mo
is the "Thousand Monkey Isles". There are many breeds of monkey-folk,
and they are all kind, brave, and simple (and many are also very crazy). They
can raise armies when they must, for all of the other Akaviri nations have, at
one time or another, tried to enslave them. They cannot decide who they hate
more, the Snakes or the Demons, but ask one, and he will probably say,
"Snakes". Though once bitter enemies, the monkey-folk are now allies
with the tiger-folk of Ka Po' Tun.

Ka Po'
Tun is the "Tiger-Dragon's Empire". The cat-folk here are ruled by
the divine Tosh Raka, the Tiger-Dragon. They are now a very great empire,
stronger than Tsaesci (though not at sea). After the Serpent-Folk ate all the
Men, they tried to eat all the Dragons. They managed to enslave the Red
Dragons, but the black ones had fled to (then) Po Tun. A great war was raged,
which left both the cats and the snakes weak, and the Dragons all dead. Since
that time the cat-folk have tried to become the Dragons. Tosh Raka is the first
to succeed. He is the largest Dragon in the world, orange and black, and he has
very many new ideas.

"First,"
Tosh Raka says, "is that we kill all the vampire snakes." Then the
Tiger-Dragon Emperor wants to invade Tamriel.

Fen let the
book fall closed in her lap. It was the fourth time she had read it that week,
and still she could not make sense of what it was trying to say. There was
something there, she knew, but what it was she could not tell.

She put the book aside and dug
through the other stacks that had accumulated upon her desk throughout the
evening until she managed to draw out a desk clock that had gotten lost under
the books and papers. The spindly gold hands read 3:32 in the morning. Nearly
four hours Fen had been poring over Mysterious
Akavir, and still nothing. She set the clock aside and looked halfheartedly
at her tea, perched atop a stack of books, which had undoubtedly gone stone
cold since it’d been poured. Fen leaned back in her seat, instinctively
reaching to fiddle with Julan’s telepathy ring on her finger. It had been three
years since she had seen him in the Mortaag Glacier, five since the Clockwork
City, and she still wore the ring constantly, holding on to the slight hope
that he might appear again, if only briefly.

As Fen stood to stretch, only then
realizing how tired she was, she heard hurried footsteps and a hand fumbling
with the door to her study. She took hold of Trueflame, sitting on a small
table beside her desk, and rested a hand on its hilt, ready to draw it out, when
the door finally opened and a serving girl stumbled in, looking exhausted.

“Oh! Your Grace, please excuse me,
I thought you’d have gone to bed.”

“That’s quite all right,” Fen told
her, relaxing and lowering Trueflame onto the table. She folded her dressing
gown closed, tying the lace over the front as she gestured the girl into the
dim study.

“There’s a man here, Your Grace.
From Ald’ruhn. He says he needs to speak to you urgently, and he
looks…disheveled.”

“From Ald’ruhn?” Fen frowned.

“Yes, Your Grace.” The man was
indeed disheveled, to put it lightly, Fen saw as she entered the audience
chamber, flanked by guards. His dark hair had been singed and half burnt off
and his clothes were torn and blackened with soot. A purple bruise had begun to
form across his face and blood ran down one cheek from a nasty-looking cut
beneath his hair. He was barefoot, and barely standing.

Fen looked angrily to the guard on
her right. “What is the meaning of this? Get this man healer at once.” The
guard nodded once and hurried back to the Imperial Cult shrine. The man on the
ground coughed, spitting up blood onto the stone floor.

“P – Please, Your Grace, I must
speak with you first.” Fen knelt beside him, taking his shoulder and helping
him sit upright. “There has been – a g – great attack on Ald’ruhn, a horrible
attack.”

“An attack by whom?” Fen asked
urgently, struggling to keep him upright as his eyes drooped.

“Some sort of portal opened just
outside the gate, Your G – Grace. Daedra spilled out, horrible, h – horrible
Daedra, and so many, destroying everything, killing everyone they saw…” he
coughed again, blood dribbling down his chin. “There weren’t enough guards,
they were destroying the city, they were…” He doubled over, wheezing violently.
The healer emerged from behind the thrones, hurrying toward them and already
opening his bag, and Fen quickly stepped back to let him go to work.

“Send a messenger to Andasreth,”
she said hastily to one of the guards beside her. “Armour him well, and see if
this is true and try to see if any of the councilors are still alive.”

“Not directly to Ald’ruhn, Your
Grace?” the guard asked, keeping in step with her as she started back toward
the Upper Palace.

“I don’t want anyone teleporting
into the middle of a town overrun by Daedra,” she replied quickly as the doors
were swung open for her. “And rouse Effe-Tei and my grandmother, ask them to
come to the main reception chambers. And Vedaves and Ethaso and Athesi. Raram
too. And Karrod.” The guard nodded once and careened off down another hall
while Fen continued the brisk walk down through a courtyard and into the main
reception chamber. A servant quickly bustled in after her to light the lamps as
Fen anxiously circled the table. It seemed like only a day ago she had been
here in conference with her father and Duke Dren, discussing the Imperial
colonization of Solstheim that had led to her participation in the Bloodmoon.

“What’s happened?” Fen turned and
saw Barenziah had entered, her snowy hair loose around her shoulders. A second
later Karrod hurried behind her, fully armoured, taking up his position on
Fen’s right side.

“It seems the attacks that are
happening in Cyrodiil have begun here as well,” Fen said as a few of her
advisors hastily joined them around the table. “But all we have to go off of
are rumours, as we’ve had barely any correspondence from the empire since Uriel
Septim was assassinated.”

She did her best to explain what
she believed to be happening, and as she finished, a messenger from the
infirmary came in to tell her that the man from Ald’ruhn had died.

Not long after, the messenger from
Ald’ruhn retuned, haltingly describing the confusion he faced in the city.

“I didn’t see any people, just
bodies, everywhere. There were loads of Daedra, more than I could have ever
imagined, just walking about the place, going around all the burning houses and
shops. Skar was completely sideways, half-buried in the ground, and that portal
was still open, all red and firey and spilling out more Daedra every minute.”

The other Great House Councilors
were summoned to Mournhold, and they had all arrived by the time dawn broke. Fen
had dispatched nearly five hundred men to Ald’ruhn with no word back. They
worked late into the next night, sending letters and messengers and pages for
everything they could think of, trying to work out a way to understand what was
happening. It was only when Velanda Omani slipped off her chair in exhaustion
that they called for a brief recess.

“Have we sent word to the other
provinces?” Fen asked, for the third time, as she and Effe-Tei left the chamber
together, Karrod close behind.

“Yes, Your Grace,” the Argonian
replied, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. “And we have not heard from any of
them. All we know is that the city of Kvatch has been destroyed, likely in a
way similar to Ald’ruhn.”

“A fine job Ocato is doing, not
even telling us what’s happening,” Fen snapped irritatedly. “I tell you,
Effe-Tei, if it were not for the economy and trade revenue we get from the
Empire I would have broken off Morrowind long ago.”

“Your Grace.” A passing page
stopped and bowed as she neared him, then quickly stepped forward. “There is a
man here wishing to speak with you.”

“Who is it?” Fen asked, pausing and
rubbing her eyes. “A councilor? I told the steward to –”

“Not a councilor, Your Grace,
someone different. He will not tell us his name, only that he must speak with
you immediately.”

“I don’t have time to see every man
that strides into Mournhold demanding an audience at once,” Fen replied
shortly. “Surely a steward can –”

“He refuses to leave without a
personal conversation, Your Grace.” The page quieted, but looked as if he
wanted to speak again.

“What is it?” Fen prompted tiredly.

“I do think you should receive him,
Your Grace. He does not look like he is…uh…Tamrielic.” Fen gave the page an odd
look, but he quickly bowed again and went on his way. She glanced at Effe-Tei,
who shook his head.

“I would say it is worth
investigating, Your Grace,” the Argonian told her.

The man was indeed not from
Tamriel. He stood with his back to Fen as she entered the small reception
chamber where he waited, and when he turned she found herself more caught
off-guard than she had imagined she would be.

“Ah, Queen Fenara Almalexia Helseth,”
he said, his voice strangely slurred in some places and accented in others.
“You are as fair as they claimed you were in the stories.” His eyes were a pale
sea-green, bright beneath heavy brows, and while his bronzed skin was smooth,
it seemed to bristle like fur when he moved. Dark stripes started at his cheeks
and disappeared into finely ornamented armour of gold and steel, etched with
designs of flowers and vines. He wore his dark hair down his back in an
intricate braid tied with hanging cloth knots. For a moment Fen could only
stare, taken aback as she was by the stranger’s appearance. Once she regained
her composure, she held out a hand for him to take and offered a tired smile.

“I don’t use the name ‘Almalexia’
anymore,” she told him. It had been years since anyone had addressed her as
such. “To whom do I owe the pleasure of this…unexpected visit?”

“I am sorry to be forward,” Fen
began as Shavir straightened. “But I am going to hazard a guess and say you are
not of Tamriel.” Shavir smiled, his slanted green eyes bright.

“They said you were clever as well,
Queen Fenara, and I had a feeling it was true. No, I am not of Tamriel. I hail
from Ka Po’ Tun, called the Tiger-Dragon Empire in your tongue, a land across
the Padomaic Sea known as –”

“ – Akavir.” Fen finished for him,
and Shavir smiled again.

“Quite so, my Lady Queen. I am
surprised you know of my land. It seems few Tamriels understand where I come
from.”

“We have few resources in the way
of Akavir,” Fen told him, gesturing for him to sit. “And those we do have are
considered incomplete or inaccurate.”

“Yes, there is certainly a…poor
history between our nations,” Shavir said, almost amused, accepting a cup of
flin from a serving girl.

“If I may be forward again, serjo,”
Fen began, gesturing for the servant to leave. “Morrowind is faced with a very
uncertain time, and I have urgent business I must attend to. I would love to
entertain you as a guest for as long as you wish to stay, but I’m afraid you’ve
come to Mournhold at a very inconvenient time.”

“Ah, but good queen, I have come at
the most opportune of times.” He leaned forward on the table, green eyes
flashing. “I was once in the service of Emperor Tosh Raka, His Divine Holiness
and Lord King of the Ka Po’ Tun. When we conquered the dragon-men, Tosh Raka
became a dragon and was known to be divine. He plots to invade Tamriel and
consume it in his dragonfire.”

“The Akaviri have made attempts to
destroy Tamriel before,” Fen replied skeptically. “They never ended well for
Akavir.”

“But this would be different. Tosh
Raka has been preparing for this battle for many years, more than you could
think to comprehend. He has our own armies at his back alongside those of the
Tang Mo, and the Akavir are anxious to exact revenge upon the Tamriels that
once wronged us.” There was silence for a time, Fen’s scarlet eyes boring into
the Akaviri’s sea green ones.

“Why are you telling me this?” She
finally asked, and a small smile twitched at Shavir’s lips.

“We are very loyal to our king, my
Lady Queen, but we live a long time, and we have all seen many years of
suffering. We do not desire war. If you could come with me to Akavir and plead
your case to Tosh Raka, we believe that you could convince him to forge a peace
between our nations. And, if you can broker that, we can help you with the
crisis here.”

“How?” Fen asked skeptically.

“In our capitol city of Kavir
S’Raka Tosh is the greatest library in all the world. My people have been on
this world far longer than yours, and our scholars and sages have acquired all
the great knowledge in the world. I spoke to them before I departed for this
world.” His sea-green eyes glimmered. “They assured me that there is an answer
to your problems within their shelves.” Fen returned his gaze readily.

“I wish I was in a position to
leave at any time, serjo, but I cannot up and abandon my people, especially
now. Perhaps I could send an emissary back with you in my stead…?”

“No,” he replied at once. “No, it
must be you. Tosh Raka will not hear the words of any others. You must be the
one to speak against the war.” Fen rubbed her eyes. They knew very little of
Akavir on Tamriel – she had no idea if this was some sort of plot to get her
out of the way or if the strange Khajiit-like man sincerely wished to help her.
It was impossible to know. But I’m
running out of options.

“How long is the voyage to Akavir?”
she asked after a time.

“Half a day, in a good Ka Po’Tun
vessel.”

“That quickly?” Shavir nodded.

“We have magicks that make travel
easier.” Fen stood.

“I won’t be able to give you an
answer until I have a clearer idea of what’s going on in the rest of
Morrowind,” she told him. “I hope you’ll be able to stay until then.”

“Certainly,” Shavir replied simply.
“But I would not tarry too long, Queen. For the fate of both our countries
rests on this decision.”

Morrowind’s fate, at least, was
looking grimmer and grimmer as the hours wore on. Fen had been building up a
standing army during her reign as queen in preparation for resistance from the
Empire when they eventually seceded, but it was not near enough to control the
situation. The Imperial troops had been recalled to Cyrodiil to defend their
own cities. The Redoran had started to fight, she’d heard, but it was a losing
battle. It seemed like they were brought more news of desolation across
Vvardenfell and the mainland every few hours.

Barenziah, to her granddaughter’s
surprise, did not seem overly shocked at the Akaviri’s proposition.

“We don’t have many other options
at this point,” she’d said grimly as they took a brief break from the council
on the terrace over the gardens.

“I could go see one of these
gates,” Fen had suggested. “See if I can figure out how to close it myself.”

“You’re one person, you expect to
close every one? And on the chance that you get killed, Morrowind will have no
heir and will fall into chaos again.”

“I’ve done an awful lot that gives
me the chance to get killed and it hasn’t happened yet,” Fen reminded her.
Barenziah sighed.

“The decision is up to you, my
dear,” she said. “If this Akaviri speaks the truth, we may be able to learn a
great deal from them.” Fen stared out at the tired, cloudy sky over Mournhold,
the silent gardens and the bustle of the great city beyond.

“Then I’ll go,” she said firmly. “I
will do anything to protect my people.”

The other councilors were much more
surprised than Barenziah, most expressing skepticism. Fen challenged them to
find a better solution to the Daedra portals, though, and they were silent. The
following morning dawned pale and pink, the shell-coloured sky greeting them as
the cart trundled into Necrom. Fen sat in the back, looking up as the day drew
to an end, Azura’s star shining down at her. They’d left hours before daybreak,
her, Shavir, and a small retinue to get them safely on their way. She’d been
unable to sleep last night, instead writing a short letter to the Dunmer people
to be distributed the next day, explaining that she had gone to find answers
and would be back within a week. Her grandmother had said little before they
left, fixing her with a knowing look and promising that she would look after
Morrowind. They need someone, Fen had
said. They need someone to look to while
I’m gone.

They did not cause a scene when
they entered Necrom. Fen’s letter had not been sent out yet, and she didn’t
want to cause a panic riding through. Shavir had left his vessel slightly to
the north of Necrom’s docks, and they were unhindered as they followed the road
out of the city.

The Akaviri commanded them to stop
just as Necrom dropped out of sight, though Fen could see no boats along the
coastline. The guards and laymen that had accompanied them looked confused, but
jumped down and began unloading the wagon all the same.

“You don’t expect me to let it get
stolen by Tamriel thieves, do you? Here,” he said simply, and he drew his arm
in a wide, simple arc. The water, still purple with the reflection of the setting
sun, began to churn, turning over itself and bubbling as a mast emerged, then a
prow, and, gradually, an entire ship rose out from the sea, water spraying off
its decks. The vessel was unlike anything Fen had ever seen – carved from some
sort of twisted wood, hung with green-glass lanterns, outfitted with a sail
made from some sort of woven hide and painted with bizarre, angular designs. It
was a small ship, but Fen still couldn’t imagine how one man could sail it
alone. The laymen, too, looked baffled, but with a word from Fen they proceeded
to carry the supplies on board, staring up at the strange carved wood and
muttering to one another as they did so.

“How does that work, exactly?” she
asked, shouldering her bag and making sure Trueflame was in place on her belt.

“It’s a simple enchantment,” Shavir
told her brightly. “I can teach it to you when we reach Ka Po’Tun.”

“Perhaps on a visit,” Fen replied
firmly. “I need to figure out how to stop these attacks and get back to
Morrowind as soon as possible.”

“Of course, Lady Queen.”

“You sure you don’t need a crew,
Queen Fenara?” one of the guards asked her as the laymen stored the last few
crates and jogged through the shallows to the shore. Fen glanced at Shavir for
an answer, and he smiled his strange, catlike grin.

“No, thank you, friend, but an
Akaviri ship takes only one man to sail.” He nodded to Fen. “When you are
ready, Lady Queen.” He turned, wading out into the surf and climbing lithely up
onto the deck.

“Thank you,” Fen told the guards
and the laymen, and, to her surprise, they all suddenly sank to their knees in
the mud before her.

“Don’t be too long in Akavir, Queen
Nerevarine,” one of them told her, and the others murmured agreement. Fen bade
them to stand and one of the guards met her gaze readily.

“You were the first person to bring
the Dunmer hope in hundreds of years, my Queen,” he said earnestly. “Morrowind
could not go on without you.”

“I won’t be more than a week,” Fen
assured them, trying to keep her face blank, but she was touched by their
sudden devotion.

Fen turned from them and followed
Shavir into the surf, climbing up and jumping over the railing into the ship.
When she turned back, she saw their her retinue standing at attention, their
arms outstretched and holding up four fingers toward her, the traditional
Dunmer salute to a great hero. They stood stock still, each with a hand held
out, their faces stoic. Fen straightened her back and returned the salute,
giving them a nod. The sky was growing darker now, and the wind pulled a few
hairs loose from her braid and made them dance around her face.

“Are you ready, Queen Fenara?”
Shavir asked her from the steering deck, and she looked back at him and nodded.
He went to the prow of the ship and raised his arms, green light winding from
his palms and down his arms, soaking into the very wood of the ship. The great
vessel shuddered, its sails unfurling and filing with wind as it lurched and
turned suddenly, pointing out toward the vast emptiness of the Padomaic Ocean.
Fen stood at the rail, watching as the jagged cliffs and hills of Morrowind
began to drop away.

I’ve
grown so much, she thought, her hands curling around the rough, carved
railing. She thought of how lost she’d been that first day in Balmora,
stumbling into the cornerclub and shrinking away from Caius Cosades in fear.
She remembered how blindly she’d traipsed around Vvardenfell, gradually growing
stronger, braver, as she worked spells and enchantments through her fingertips,
fought off adversaries that blocked her at every turn, the first time she’d
killed a man. Remembered when Moon-and-Star had fallen into her palms, when
Azura had spoken to her and told her of her destiny. She thought of the
conversation she’d had with Hasphat Antabolis in the Fighter’s Guild, how he’d
asked her the question that had stuck in her mind for years: What about you? Are you going to change the
world? Or just be carried by the flow?

She supposed she’d changed the
world, though that seemed like such a grand way of putting it. It had been her
fate as Nerevarine to put an end to Dagoth Ur, but it was her own love for
Morrowind that led her to push even further than that, to strike down the names
of the Tribunal and take her place as queen after her father’s death, change
the way the Dunmer viewed the world from a grim perspective of ash and death to
one of light; of hope. And now she was going to Akavir to help again. To save
Morrowind. Because that’s why I did all
of it, she thought. For them. For my
home and for my people.

She slid Julan’s dark telepathy
ring from her finger and held it so that it perfectly encircled the setting
sun, letting the metal grow warm to the touch. Fen remembered when she’d found
him, about to be decimated by the clannfears she used to tease him relentlessly
about. She remembered how her frustration in the world had boiled over then,
how she’d shouted at him and grudgingly agreed to let him follow her for a
time. Fen closed her eyes, letting the ocean spray cool her face. He died so that you could live. She knew
that now, that the Ahemmusa had memorialized him as a hero for saving the life
of the Nerevarine. And she knew that he was proud of how he had gone. And that
he was proud of her.

So she let herself look forward.
She stepped away from the stern, going to join Shavir at the prow and look out
at the endless ocean that stretched out before them. She would go to Akavir and
return. And when she did, she would continue to live as Julan would have wanted
her to – for her people. The night had almost completely taken hold of the sky
now, and Fen looked up at Azura’s star, fading into the darkness but still
there, watching over her.

And so Fenara Helseth, the Queen of
Morrowind, the Nerevarine – but really just Fen – turned her eyes forward, into
the great unknown.